1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printer that supplies printouts to a post-printing process, and to a control method of the printer.
2. Related Art
To prevent label application failures and improve the efficiency of the print and apply labelling operation in a print and apply labelling system that prints labels with a printer and then applies the printed labels to products, the printer is preferably controlled to print the labels according to the timing of the label application operation.
JP-A-2014-172634 describes a print and apply labelling system including a label printer (printer) for printing the labels, and a label applicator for applying the printed labels to product. In this print and apply labelling system the label applicator applies printed labels to the product by moving between label picking position and apply position. The system described in JP-A-2014-172634 calculates the delay until the label printer starts printing and controls the timing of label printing according to the timing of label applicator movement. This reduces the chance of the moving label applicator interfering with the printed label, causing the label to fall or become distorted and the label application operation to fail.
Calculating the delay until label printing starts in the system described in JP-A-2014-172634 considers the time required for packaging and movement of the product the label is applied to, and the time required to feed the label to the applicator. However, the print timing is not controlled with consideration for internal factors on the printer side, such as variation in the required printing time, that is, the length of the printing process including returning the print unit from the standby state waiting for the next label to the state enabling printing. As a result, when the required printing time varies due to such factors, labels may not be issued at the optimal timing and the label application operation may fail. The print and apply labelling operation may also not run efficiently because labels are not produced at the optimal timing.